Democrats Eye Overturning Bush’s Provider Conscience Expansion

Democratic policymakers vowing to overturn a controversial new Bush administration rule that could limit women’s reproductive health options have several tools at their disposal to do so -– but party leaders aren’t revealing which they favor.

The new regulation — unveiled
by the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) earlier this month —
expands the rights of some healthcare workers to withhold treatments
and counseling services, possibly including contraception, based on
their moral or religious sentiments. The White House argues that the
change — known as the “right of conscience” rule — is necessary to
clarify similar worker protections surrounding abortion and
sterilization procedures that already exist as law. But many Democrats
have joined women’s health advocates, healthcare providers and some
state officials in blasting the rule as a sweeping expansion of
existing statute that threatens women’s access to reproductive health
services.

“Congress,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) said in a terse Dec.
18 statement, “will work with President-elect [Barack] Obama to reverse
this rule.”

But party leaders aren’t saying how they’ll try to do it.
Representing one option, Sens. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Patty Murray
(Wash.) introduced legislation last month that would simply prevent HHS from implementing the new rule. Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Col.) and Louis Slaughter (D-N.Y.) have vowed to introduce similar legislation in the House next year.

“The Bush Administration continues to pursue its extreme ideology
over sound public health policies,” DeGette said in a statement earlier
this month.

Congress could also simply refuse to fund the new rule, which is estimated to cost $44 million.

Or they could nix it altogether by invoking an obscure law
— known as the Congressional Review Act (CRA) — which allows Congress
to reject White House regulations passed within 60 legislative days of
Congress’s adjournment. The law would leave Democrats several months
next year to kill the rule.

An advantage of the CRA route is that the vote would be exempt from
the dreaded Senate filibuster, which has snuffed dozens of Democratic
bills over the past two years. The disadvantage is that the measure
would have to stand alone and couldn’t be buried in another bill as a
rider.

Jessica Arons, director of the Center for American Progress’ Women’s
Health and Rights Program, said that invoking the CRA is not as easy as
it sounds, particularly when the issue relates to abortion.
Conservative-leaning Democrats might not support it, she said, and
party leaders might not have the political will to bring it up to begin
with.

The Congressional fight could shift to the White House. The HHS
under Obama could simply propose a new regulation. Obama has already
criticized the rule, issuing a statement in August saying the change “complicates, rather than clarifies the law.”

Yet the issue could be a thorny one for Obama, who ran on a platform
of reaching across the aisle to Republicans. Despite his early
opposition to the rule, he might not want to make an abortion-related
issue one of his first battles, if only because it might threaten that
message of bipartisan healing.

Health care advocates point out that crafting a new White House
regulation would also be time-consuming, calling for periods of public
comment that could extend the process to six months or longer. The
legislative options, advocates say, could happen much more quickly.

Spokespersons in the offices of Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that discussions over how to reverse the
regulation are underway, but no final decision has been made.

Plenty of laws on the books — both federal and state — already
protect health care workers from having to participate in abortion and
sterilization procedures based on moral or religious objections. The
new rule would expand those laws by forcing any healthcare entity
receiving federal dollars to attest that employees aren’t forced to
assist in practices and procedures they deem to be “morally coercive or
discriminatory.”

“A trend that isolates and excludes some among various religious,
cultural, and ethnic groups from participating in the delivery of
health care is especially troublesome,” the rule states, “when
considering current and anticipated shortages of health care
professionals in many medical disciplines and regions of the country.”

Yet the rule doesn’t specifically define which practices and
policies would be covered, leaving many lawmakers and women’s health
advocates to fear that contraception and other family-planning services
would apply. Additionally, the rule will apply to anyone who “assists
in the performance of a procedure,” a group defined broadly as anyone
who participates in “any activity with a reasonable connection to the
objectionable procedure, including referrals, training, and other
arrangements for the procedure, health service, or research activity.”

“It goes well beyond doctors and nurses to include almost anyone who
works in the health care sector,” said Arons of the Center for American
Progress. “It allows people to withhold relevant medical information
and not inform patients about all their options.”

HHS estimates the new regulation will affect roughly 572,000
health-related facilities, including hospitals, pharmacies,
laboratories and medical schools. The rule was published in the Federal
Register Dec. 18 and will take effect 30 days afterwards — just 48
hours before Obama takes office.

HHS did not return calls for comment.

There is also worry that the new rule will allow healthcare workers
to take jobs in certain facilities – a family planning clinic, for
example – for the sole purpose of withholding certain information,
counseling services or treatments they find objectionable. Tait Sye, a
spokesman for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, pointed out
that, under the new rule, it would be difficult to identify such a
saboteur.

Meanwhile, states aren’t waiting around for Washington lawmakers to
act. In Connecticut, for example, state Attorney General Richard
Blumenthal is considering legal action to prevent the new regulation
from taking hold. Blumenthal says he’s worried that the change could
prevent victims of rape from receiving emergency contraception.

“We went through a very lengthy, painstaking, contentious process to
reach our statute in Connecticut which has worked well for everyone,”
Blumenthal told The Associated Press earlier this month.

Attorneys general from at least a dozen other states have joined
Blumenthal in their vocal condemnation of the new rule. More recently,
health officials and lawmakers in New Mexico, Iowa and Colorado are also weighing in with concerns.

The right-of-conscience rule is not the only regulation to be
ushered from the White House in recent weeks. Rules to ease
restrictions on mountaintop mining, expand oil shale development and
allow commercial fisheries to police their own polluting have all
emerged from the White House in the final moments of President George
W. Bush’s lame-duck term. Still, none has inspired the outcry of the
“right to conscience” rule.

“On its way out the door,” DeGette said, “the Bush Administration
has, once again, stubbornly and irresponsibly attacked Americans’
access to health care.”

Unfortunately, this issue continues to polarize because of strong intractable opinions on both sides. A significant problem with the rule is that it seems to have been written by a party on one side of the fence. The rule could have been written in a way that would have caused much less furor and still served many of its intended goals.

If the rule had been written so as to limit interpretation of its applicability, it may have escaped some of the opposition. Much of the objection is arising simply because of lack of focus of the rule and the possibility for its application when unexpected or undesired. Furthermore, if the rule ensured patient access by enforcing a referral from those choosing not to assist, it may also have been an acceptable compromise. Many groups see the potential for patient harm in not receiving treatment because of “other people’s” belief systems.

The reality is that as a last minute attempt at policy making, this rule was really just a sort of bomb to hand to the next administration in an attempt to undermine its effectiveness.

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What truly bothers me is that we are even thinking about taking away a persons right. Our fore fathers wanted us to have freedom of speech a right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness as long as we do this in a responsible manner. I don’t mean to be obstinate but where is our freedom if we take away our actions. Someone to have an abortion that’s there action why should I have to agree with that. Why should you or anyone else say what I should do. We must fight for the right to speak freely as well as think freely.

http://xrumer-palladium.blogspot.com/ invalid-0

“Your boss doesn’t know”..”The patient doesn’t know. The hospital doesn’t know” “No one knows”..
And therein lies the problem, the patient might not get proper treatment or pharmaceuticals and could die. The boss and the hospital, the taxpayers, could, and should, get sued for malpractice.

If this edict doesn’t get thrown out with the 60-day rule, the dissenting professionals should have to post very visibly in their office or pharmacy or, preferably, on a tag on their shirt that they do not give women reproductive options or dispense birth control pills. If it’s not posted they should be sued.